Sax Man's Journal

In 1961, nineteen-year-old Woody Altman gets himself thrown out of Princeton, due primarily to a lack of motivation to follow in his father’s footsteps. Not willing to bow down to his parents’ rules, he takes off to New York with the intention of making a living as a musician. Ending up in Greenwich Village during the Beat Generation movement of the early sixties, Woody earns his way by getting noticed in the gritty coffeehouses of the Village and squalid clubs in Harlem, surviving on sandwiches and apples as he attempts to earn a living doing what he loves. Ultimately, it will lead him to understand the agony he must endure to become successful, often exacerbated by his own weaknesses and addictions. It will also lead to the love of his life, which ends in tragedy, leaving him with a daughter to raise on his own. Told from the perspective of what Woody went through in his youth, Sax Man’s Journal explores the themes of burgeoning sexuality and promiscuity, addiction, pleasure, and regret, all shrouded in the perspective of a seventy-eight-year-old man looking back on his life.